Just Above My Head Page 16

  And I wasn’t worried about his smoking, but about where it might lead. Where might anything lead? Arthur’s first lay might lead to twenty-seven children, or howling syphilis at the bottom of Bellevue Hospital. This meant that I was worried about his singing: where might that lead? I was sick of myself, goddamn—this meant that I was worried about his height and his weight and his bowel movements and his blood count and his cock and his balls and his pubic hair and his sweat and every hostile or (especially) friendly eye, and every street he crossed, every move he made—didn’t I have anything better to do? Lord, my Chinese boxes were not funny, made me really sick of myself, and the waitress came then, thank heaven, and we—Martha and I—ordered drinks. If you’re that taken up with someone else’s life, it means that you’re frightened of your own—like missionaries and anthropologists, heavyhearted, tight-assed creeps—and, yet, it is also true—Chinese boxes!—that we are all, forever, and every day, part of one another.

  Then we sat in silence for a while, a curious, charged, interior silence, while Paul played. Now he was playing for us; and Sidney entered, as though summoned by the music, crept over to our table, found a chair, and sat down. I pantomimed, my mother, my brother, and Sidney pantomimed his pleasure, and so, the first day of Christmas wound slowly down.

  Martha and I woke up late the next day, and there was nothing right between us, nothing. For one thing, she had to jump out of bed right away, because she had promised to meet my mother at Amy Miller’s house; and we had always spent our days off, together, in bed. We had fucked hard, hot, and hungry, but we had not made love, something was gone. She came, I came—I made her come, she made me come—but it was as though, at that very moment, locked together, grappling with each other, we were reaching for each other, calling each other across indescribable gorges, with each thrust and spasm resigning ourselves to anguish, each watching the other vanish into an atmosphere at once softer and more treacherous than mist, more relentless than the glare of sun on steel. The ache of our pounding, thrusting bodies sang nothing to be done, nothing to be done, nothing, nothing, nothing to be done!

  I fell away, at last, then turned back, held her. She turned toward the window. Her dark shape and head against the blinds of the morning, blurred. And I copped out completely, left this body for a while.

  “Will you be here when I get back? I want to talk to you.”

  “Well, sure. Only you don’t know exactly what time you’ll be making it back.”

  “Mrs. Miller seems a little unpredictable, that’s true—”

  “Well, honey, there’s also Mister Miller, and Miss Julia, and the little brother—”

  “That’s your mother’s department. All I have to do is be charming and efficient—”

  “While the menfolk sleep. I know. Don’t be bitter. Anyway, baby, believe me, on that scene, the last thing you need is even the memory of the odor of some cat’s balls.”

  “Memory. Will you be here? I can shop on the way back.”

  “You will do no shopping, nor no cooking, neither. I’m taking you out, remember? And if I’m not here when you get here, I’ll be here, understand? You won’t have time to do no pacing-of-the floors number.”

  “You’ll probably be asleep.”

  “If I ever get back to sleep, I will. Bye.”

  She kissed me. I kissed her. Lord, I really dig this girl, what’s wrong?

  I don’t want to leave, and I don’t know how to stay.

  “Later.”

  “Later—don’t worry, now, honey, I’ll be here.”

  “I love you, Hall.”

  “So do I love you, baby. So do I love you.”

  And she swung out and I went back to sleep, in Martha’s bed, for a while.

  For a while: a short while. It was late in the day, the day after Christmas, the second day of Christmas, and the phone began to ring.

  Everybody we knew knew about me and Martha, and she wasn’t—dare I say the word?—on: Welfare. She couldn’t be penalized for having a man in her bed, or on the premises, and so, when the phone rang, I always picked it up.

  The first call was from Aunt Josephine.

  “How’s my child?”

  “Your child is out, Aunt Josephine—this is Hall—”

  “Oh. Prince! What is she doing out, already, and you still there? and I bet you still in bed!”

  “That’s right, Aunt Josephine—but—”

  “Waiting for her to bring home the chitterlings—”

  I laughed, and I knew that Aunt Josephine meant no harm, was teasing me, but my laugh was a hollow, exasperated laugh. “Why you so hard on me, Aunt Jo? She and my mother had something to do together today, she was doing my mother a favor—”

  “Your mother?”

  “Yeah. I got a mother.”

  “Don’t jump all salty now!”

  “I’m not. But—she was doing—she promised to do my mama a favor, for somebody else, and —I guess they must be at the hospital right now.”

  The moment I said “hospital,” I was stone staring wide awake.

  “At the hospital?”

  “Well—she can explain it to you, Aunt Jo. It was really between her and my mama and—now—well, I’m just waiting for Martha to come home.”

  Silence. Then, “You two might just as well get married, you know that, don’t you? Make life easier for everybody—”

  “What makes you think she wants to marry me?”

  “Oh, nigger, hush,” she said, “and tell my child I called—sure wish I could talk to your mama,” and Aunt Josephine laughed and hung up.

  I hung up, and looked at the phone, and looked around me. I leaned back, and lit a cigarette, and watched, through the cigarette smoke, the vanishing room, which I won’t attempt to describe: the incredibly, even heroically, overburdened bedroom of a three-room apartment on the sixth floor of a high-rise tenement. The elevators were useful for a fix or a blowjob, theft, rape, or murder; the roof was ideal for gang-bangs; and the terraces created a picturesque space between the rats, and the garbage, and you.

  Oh. I got out of bed, my cigarette burning between my lips—which felt dry, chapped, and bruised—and went to take a piss. While I was still pissing, the phone rang. I hurried it up, and shambled back to the bedroom, feeling like the hunchback of Notre Dame.

  This time it was Arthur.

  “Hey, Hall?”

  “Yeah. How you doing, brother?”

  “All right. Hey, Martha told me to call you just in case she was late getting back—they left me here, at the house, to wait for calls, but ain’t nobody called me yet, and it’s getting late—”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know, brother. Mama and Daddy left with your girl friend—Martha—hey, she’s real nice, I dig her—and I think Daddy was supposed to deal with Brother Miller, while Martha and Mama got Sister Miller to the hospital—”

  “And what about Julia? And Jimmy?”

  “I don’t know. I guess they must be home. Look. I got to go out. I got a date, I mean, I got a rehearsal.”

  “Okay. Listen. If anybody calls before you go out, tell them, if I’m not here, I’ll be in the bar on the corner of Julia’s house—Daddy and Joel Miller and me were there yesterday—just say, Jordan’s Cat, that’s the name of the bar where Sidney works, Sidney, the cat you met last night, you got that?”

  “Yeah. You coming home?”

  “Yeah, I’ll see you later.”

  “Okay. Wow. What a scene,” and he hung up.

  I shaved and showered and got my clothes on. Waiting for the phone to ring, I poured myself a drink. I called my house. There was no answer. I called the hospital several times, getting the busy signal, or no answer. It was six, and night was falling.

  I looked at the streets, so far beneath me, nearly empty now: and a belated snow had begun to fall, so vindictively that it was black before it hit the ground.

  I dialed the number of Sidney’s bar.

  “Hello,” said Sidney’
s voice, “Jordan’s Cat—”

  “Hey, baby, this is Hall. You going to be there for a while?”

  “Hey! you sound so—articulate—so early? Yeah. I’m here. You want to come by?”

  “Yeah. I need a friend.”

  “Hurry up, then, baby, I’m here,” said Sidney, and hung up.

  The streets, when I descended into them, were bleak with promise. Bleak: not so much with the broken promise, the broken promise having created our style and stamina: bleak with the price of the promise to be kept. This promise rang and rang, through the streets I walked, on the second day of Christmas. It rang in the “do-rag” brothers, and the barber shops, the women, the girls, the children—the lye which cooked the hair had reached the marrow of the bone. And, yet—this is what I find so strange, since my heart was heavy, and I was thinking of my brother and my girl and Korea —something in the poisoned marrow of the bone perpetually calculated and achieved the antidote. How? and how was I to do it?

  Got to Jordan’s Cat, and there was Sidney, with his do-rag off.

  The bar seemed nearly as empty, thank God, as it had been the first time I had jumped in there; and that had been—I did not believe this—yesterday? But, yes: Christmas Day was yesterday.

  My bewilderment must have shown. I was suddenly glad that I’d shaved and showered, done all those things—but everything showed anyway, for Sidney said, “You look low, old buddy—what you want to drink?”

  I looked at him, and I put my head in my hands. All of a sudden something hit me, hit me hard, and I held my head in my hands, and cried.

  Memory is a strange vehicle. Or perhaps, we are the vehicle which carries the increasingly burdensome and mercurial passenger called memory. I looked over Jordan. Oh, yes, but the event, the moment, engraved in me, which is me more surely than my given name is me: escapes my memory. Memory is mercurial and selective, but passion welds life and death together, riding outside and making no judgment. You are, yourself, the judgment.

  Julia remembers Arthur, at Sister Bessie’s funeral, singing “What Are They Doing in Heaven Today?” but Arthur remembers singing “We Are Our Heavenly Father’s Children.” I don’t know. I know only that when, before my do-rag brother, I held my head in my hands and cried, ringing in my head, for some reason, was the song:

  We have the joy

  of this assurance,

  our heavenly Father

  will always answer prayer:

  And He knows

  He knows

  Just

  how

  much

  we can bear.

  “Come back here,” said Sidney, whispering. “Come back here.” He moved, with a beautiful discretion, to the end of the bar, reached for me, caught me, dragged me to the area behind the jukebox, and, in that electrifying passage, he never, if memory serves, said a mumbling word.

  I leaned on the table, with water dripping through my fingers. I couldn’t stop, and yet, I didn’t know why I was crying.

  “Take off your coat,” Sidney said. “It’s hot in here,” and he helped me take my coat off, and put a handkerchief in my hand. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and he left me alone. I wiped my face and dried my eyes, blew my nose, looked around the back room. I don’t know what I was thinking. I could not remember ever being shaken like this before.

  I heard people coming into the bar, heard Sidney’s heavy, cheerful voice as he served them. I began to feel that I should get on back to Martha’s. But I couldn’t stay at Martha’s, and I certainly couldn’t stay here, and now, I couldn’t even cry anymore.

  Sidney reappeared, carrying a glass of very dark tomato juice.

  “This is a double Bloody Mary Molotov,” he said, looking at me carefully and grinning at the same time, “and she ain’t no virgin; she’s been around, that’s how she met Mr. Molotov. Drink it slow, but drink it. I’ll be right back.”

  A couple came, and took the table in the far corner. He looked like a basketball player, with that kind of raunchy cheerfulness, and she looked like a cheerleader who was also first in her business administration class. They were glowing from the air outside, laughing and being happy together, and they made me feel old.

  I sat there for a while. The seven o’clock people were piling in, and Sidney was alone on the bar. His double Bloody Mary Molotov gave you something to cry about, certainly, if you felt you just had to cry, and could probably have disintegrated gallstones, but it made you sit straight up. I wondered what would happen if you drank two. But one, right now, was enough, and Sidney had been beautiful.

  I sat there for a while. I knew Sidney wanted me to wait until he could get back to me; I knew he’d understand if I couldn’t. Martha would be coming back soon. I wondered what her news would be.

  The Miller family, after all, until I had been forced to witness the events of this Christmas, had been distinguished from other families only by the fact that Julia was a child evangelist. But this was not, really, a very great distinction: it did not violate, or even bring into question, any of the reality, or principles, of our lives. If we did not believe, precisely, in the power of the Holy Ghost, the speaking in tongues, the ecstatic possession, the laying on of hands, neither did we doubt it, nor did we know anyone who doubted. We would understand it better by and by—perhaps, on the whole, that was the way we felt about it. If we found some folks ridiculous, we mocked nobody’s faith. We may have considered that they themselves constituted a mockery of their faith, but the faith itself was another matter altogether. Each prayed the way he could. We simply took it for granted that everybody prayed—sometime, somewhere.

  I didn’t feel that Joel Miller, for example, was much of a man, and I know that Paul felt that, maybe we all felt that. But that wasn’t because of his faith. It wasn’t even really because of his daughter; except in the sense that the father had not been able to correct the daughter; and without that correction, she was not, as she assumed, safe in the arms of Jesus. (Jesus, after all, had other things to do, and couldn’t be expected to waste His time taking care of spoiled brats.) No: it was because Joel didn’t really seem to believe in anything, not even long enough to fake it. This meant, for us, that he was a man with no prayers in him, no resources—he’d never make it through the storm. Paul found Joel exasperating, but his reaction was not to reject him but to try to lift him up. It was Paul’s love for Florence which caused him to attempt to deal with Joel—he was a necessary element in Florence’s attempt to deal with Amy: but Florence had no interest in Joel’s salvation, nor had she any interest in contesting the power of the Holy Ghost. She wasn’t thinking about the-Holy Ghost, Who was perfectly all right, she would have said, in His place. But His place was not here. The Holy Ghost had nothing to do with the fact that Joel was too “trifling” to make his ailing wife see a doctor— that was not to be blamed on the Holy Ghost! As for the healing power of the Holy Ghost, well, all healing was miraculous, we knew that very well. The hosts of heaven were certainly overworked. It seemed unnecessary and immodest, and in fact, inconsiderate, to call such special and undignified attention to oneself. Lord, others had had to do it—just pick up your bed, child, and walk!

  But this had to do, too, with Sister Miller’s aura of pained and special sanctity because the Lord had shown His favor by giving her an evangelist for a daughter.

  So then, sitting there, in my brief, enforced limbo, I thought of Julia in a new way, and I began to be frightened for her.

  Joel opened the door for Florence and Martha, and stood there, looking, Martha said later, surprised. He was in his shirt-sleeves, unshaven, and to Martha, he seemed very frail.

  “Good evening, Brother Miller,” Florence said. “We won’t trouble you but for a few seconds. We come to get Amy. She ready, or is she still resting?”

  He answered with a slight bow, and a smile, but said nothing. They entered the house, and he closed, then locked, the door. Martha and Florence looked quickly at each other.

  “Come on in,” said Joel
. “Make yourself at home.” And he led them to the living room.

  There was a heavy constraint in the air, and the house was silent.

  “This young lady is from the hospital,” Florence said. “Miss Jackson—”

  Martha and Joel nodded and smiled at each other, and Joel said, with his little smile, “Can I get you ladies something refreshing?”

  Florence looked exasperated, then frightened. “Why, no, Brother Miller,” she said. “You just tell Amy we’re here, and well go on.” She looked around, still frightened, not knowing why. “Where’s Jimmy? And Julia?”

  “Well, I think,” Joel said carefully, “that little Jimmy might have gone out to the movies, just a few minutes ago, and Julia”—he paused, and nervously bit his upper lip.

  The silence of the house, and Joel’s silence, now began to speak to Florence. “Where’s Amy?” she asked.

  “Well, Julia,” Joel said, “she took her mother to a prayer meeting—a new church, somewhere around here, but I don’t know the exact address.”

  “But she made a date to come to the hospital with me and Miss Jackson this afternoon!” Florence shouted.

  “Well, you know how Amy is,” Joel said. “Looks like everybody knows her better than me. She’s always changing her mind—keeps me dizzy.”